Data
Data Points
Marketing horse racing through its rich data is on the agenda for the 2013 UA-RTIP Symposium on Racing and Gaming:
New Ways to Look at Numbers
Sports fans are traditionally a group of people who have an insatiable hunger for facts, figures and statistics. Racing is a sport that is data rich but that attribute hasn’t been marketed. Panelists look at new data that could be presented to the racing audience, new ways to present the information we currently provide as well as how all of it can be used to attract new customers and increase the frequency of current players.
It’s also the subject of Thorotrends’ call to “release the data,” which I hope the Symposium data panelists will read before they arrive in Arizona, along with everything Superterrific has gathered on the issue of freeing racing data from paywalls and PDFs in her latest on Exacta-mundo.
Making data more available can only help attract more horseplayers. I’ve believed so for as long as I’ve been a racing fan, and have only been confirmed in that belief watching other sports move ahead with data, whether in creating APIs, building it into mobile apps, supporting hackathons, or holding events such as Major League Baseball’s Bases Coded, in which teams competed “to create the next great interactive media product for baseball fans.”
Note, I’m not advocating that past performances and other handicapping products should be free, or that Equibase should release all the data it collects via an API without restrictions, although I do think it should release the majority of its data and without a significant lag. (Just as full charts can be downloaded within a hour of a race, so should race data.)
If you’re wondering what free(er) data might look like in racing, consider the models that already exist, ranging from MLB’s minimalist Gameday API to ESPN’s robust developer center. Imagine if Equibase created something similar to ESPN, which opens its data feeds to users for non-commercial applications with some usage restrictions (such as limiting the number of API calls within a set period) — as Thorotrends writes, the majority of racing fans would continue to use data as they always have, but there would be a small group who would hack and experiment. It would make racing feel less stagnant and less mysterious, leading to more fans and more wagering.
Market the data, certainly, just free the data first.
10/14/13 Update: Yes! From Dana Byerly, here’s a real-world example of how a horse racing API could be used.
Odds and Ends
In June 2011, Courier-Journal reporter Gregory Hall live tweeted the John Veitch-Life at Ten hearing. It was superb coverage. “My 140-word tweets give fuller picture of the Veitch hearing than my newspaper story tomorrow will,” he wrote then, a realization that helped lead to yesterday’s launch of Hall’s new blog, HorseBiz, which promises “inside baseball” for racing folk. I’ve already added it to my RSS reader. You should too.
Few use 140 characters as effectively as @o_crunk, who tweeted about Trakus:
Trakus could be. Why isn’t it?
Also seeking answers re: New York racing …
Liz O’Connell pursues information on the New York Task Force on Racehorse Health and Safety and its delayed report on Aqueduct breakdowns (via):
On May 30, 2012, I made a freedom of information request to Racing and Wagering that was partially answered after the maximum number of delays allowed by law; then the information was mailed to the wrong address.
Frustrating. And the information she does get is illuminating only in what it reveals about the current state of New York’s racing stewardship.
In happier news: “After a period of time, IHA regained his calmness and he [grazed] in stately fashion just like a star.” Big Red Farm’s weekly I’ll Have Another updates are delightful (via).
Friday Notes
There have been retirements, defections, and unexpected announcements, but the recent Breeders’ Cup news that’s most interested me is that Theyskens’ Theory is now a probable for the Juvenile Fillies. ‘Theory,’ a Bernardini-sired 3/4 sibling to 2005 juvenile champion Stevie Wonderboy, started her career with three straight wins two wins from three starts before finishing third to Together and White Moonstone in the Fillies’ Mile. Trainer Brian Meehan, who hadn’t been talking about the BC for the buzz baby before that race at Ascot last month, much less a surface switch, said of the effort, “It was a good run, just not her best.” Maybe she’ll show that at Churchill Downs.
Keeneland president Nick Nicholson is succeeding Alan Marzelli as Equibase chairman at the end of the year. Dare to dream? It would be nice if the announcement heralded positive changes for the industry’s database going forward. Getting ahead of things, I started wondering what datasets I’d most like Equibase to make freely available in the way that Keeneland has its Polycapping database and sales results. All the Triple Crown races, of course, and the Breeders’ Cup races, as a group and by division. The Eclipse winners, as a group and by division. Pools, certainly, by track, by year, by wager type …
While watching Mr. McMillan direct every issue back to the rent being too damn high, it occurred to me that maybe this is just what we need in horse racing. Instead of analyzing to death all the nuances of the issues that plague our sport, maybe we need the single-mindedness of Mr. McMillan. Maybe, we need Mr. McMillan himself to be our leader. Maybe we need Mr. McMillan to head up a new movement called “The Takeout is Too Damn High!”
Racing already has a McMillan. Its name is HANA.
With the end of the Suffolk Downs meet fast approaching, many East Boston racehorses are in need of new careers. CANTER New England is holding its fifth annual Showcase this Sunday, October 24, on the Suffolk backstretch, from 9:00 AM to noon, for just that reason. Read this delightful OTTB success story, about how well a retired Suffolk thoroughbred adapted to life off track, and stop by to check out the dozens of jumper, riding, and pasture prospects that the hard-working CANTER volunteers have cataloged for this year’s event.
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Jessica Chapel writes and edits in Massachusetts. Railbird is a Thoroughbred horse racing blog published from June 2004 to July 2019. More / Contact
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